Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to methods and systems for providing a user interface of an enterprise application and more particularly to managing an interface of an enterprise application to support unlimited modal and modeless elements thereof.
In a user interface, such as a web page presented through a browser application, a modal window is commonly understood to be a child window that is opened, for example in response to a click of an element or other action related to the parent window, and with which the user interacts, e.g., enters some data or takes some other action, before returning to the parent page or window. Such modal windows are used to direct or control a user's workflow, for example when filling a form or completing some other task. Popular browser applications provide means, for example through methods exposed in an Application Program Interface (API) of the browser application, for applications to use modal windows.
However, the methods provided by browser applications are limited and do not satisfy the needs of all applications. For example, enterprise applications which may support very elaborate and extensive workflows have a need to open a very large number of modal windows. Current implementations of modal functions do not support nested and multiple levels of windows. Another problem with current implementations of modal functions is that they do not support or consider position, size, or other layout or format definitions the application may have for the windows. For example, current modal windows cannot resize based on the content therein or span beyond the boundaries of a containing frame. Other limitations of current implementations of modal functions in browser application further limit their usefulness with some applications. Hence, there is a need for improved methods and systems for providing a user interface of an enterprise application.